Self Publishing a Book on Amazon | The Complete Beginners Guide

About this video

Dale L. Roberts gives a complete beginner’s walkthrough of self-publishing on Amazon via Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). He defines self-publishing as wearing many hats — writing, editing, proofreading, formatting, cover design, marketing — and warns to only invest money you can stand to lose. Compared with traditional publishing, he cites creative control, higher royalties (he says traditionally published authors anecdotally may get 10% or less per sale), speed to market, free accessibility of platforms like KDP, ability to target niches, and direct reader engagement. The workflow is: know your market, finish a first draft through consistent daily writing without chasing perfection, then edit and proofread with outside help rather than alone — hiring an editor, doing a peer swap if cash-strapped, and not relying only on Grammarly, ProWritingAid or ChatGPT. He covers formatting differences for ebooks versus paperback/hardcover, calling EPUB the gold standard for ebooks and PDF for print, tools including Word, Google Docs, Atticus, Vellum and Scrivener, and hiring formatting out. Covers matter heavily for sales, with hiring out costing, in his range, $10 to $1,000. For KDP setup, banking and tax information are required before publishing, and he advises consulting an attorney about personal versus LLC/tax ID choices. Uploading is three steps: metadata, manuscript/cover/ISBN, and distribution/pricing. A free Amazon ISBN can only be used on Amazon (ebooks get an ASIN instead), while your own ISBN is needed to publish widely elsewhere. On royalties he states ebooks priced $2.99-$9.99 earn 70% minus delivery fees and 35% outside that range, print earns 60% minus print costs and Expanded Distribution 40% minus print costs, KDP pays 60 days after month-end, and he recommends new authors try 90-day KDP Select exclusivity. He closes with marketing basics — keywords, cover and copy — pricing by averaging the top 20 books in a genre, daily promotion, and mistakes to avoid including multiple accounts, low-quality content, wrong categories/keywords, plagiarism, trademarks in metadata, and ignoring KDP emails.

Key takeaways

• Finish the first draft first through consistent daily writing; you cannot edit a blank page, and perfection during drafting stalls publication.
• Do not edit alone — hire an editor if possible or arrange a peer swap, because authors miss their own typos, plot holes and errors and software/AI alone is not enough.
• Use EPUB for ebooks and PDF for print, get a professional cover, and understand ISBNs: a free Amazon ISBN is locked to Amazon, while your own ISBN is needed for wide print distribution.
• Know KDP royalty math as presented: 70% minus delivery fees for ebooks at $2.99-$9.99 (35% outside), 60% minus print costs for print, 40% minus print costs for Expanded Distribution, paid 60 days after month-end.
• Avoid account-ending mistakes: one KDP account per person, no low-quality or plagiarised content, no inaccurate categories/keywords or trademarks in metadata, and check email daily to answer KDP within their deadline.

Episode details: published August 26, 2024 · 51:04 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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